


Armor

by Morse_s Child (sherlockstummy)



Category: Inspector Morse (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlockstummy/pseuds/Morse_s%20Child
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wears the scars like armor, a testament to the battlements of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Armor

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this partially because I think Morse has a history of self-harm and also because I, too, self-harm. I hadn't in a couple months, but last night, I had a relapse. I found myself feeling guilty and stupid that I had done this, but I want to learn to wear my scars with pride. So, this is dedicated to victims of self-harm everywhere. May you learn to wear your scars like armor, as testaments of the war you've survived-and won.

Morse unlocks the door to his home after spending a late night at the office. It’s been a long week, and he’s looking forward to a relaxing week-end. Knowing Lewis can take solace in his family is comforting, too. An old guv of his used to say, “Case like this will tear the heart right out of a man.” He thought maybe, somewhere, in the tired haze of his overworked mind, he may have ordered Lewis home. Somewhere, in the tired haze of Lewis’ mind, he must’ve heard him.

Morse ascended the stairs tiredly. He usually had no trouble with them, but tonight, his movements were slow and plodding. Age had taken its toll, but it had not taken his sharp intellect. Not yet.

He stripped in preparation to shower, eyes roving carelessly over his bare arms. His eyes were trained to spot the harsh lines going against the grain of skin, like mountain ranges marked on maps. Harsh, worn lines that he wears like armor, a testament to the battlements of life, but which are also painful, vivid memories of when life was bleak and there seemed no escape.

Those times have passed now, but the memories live on. 

Not all his scars are self-inflicted, of course. His body is mottled with various scars. Some of them came from being a child in a rural area; falling out of trees, scratched by chickens, bit by horses and dogs, the line of where a shard of broken beer glass cut into his foot. A lot of them came from being a careless, energetic DC; the scar in his side from chasing a lunatic, without backup, through the Bodleian most notably. Some scrapes from scaling chain-link fences in pursuit of suspects, shoulders aching from banging carelessly into bricks and wood and concrete.

Morse traces an angry scar on his thigh as he washes the weight of the day away. It’s still red, even though many years have passed, and he can remember the night he made it, edging the knife’s edge closer and closer to his vein…

Morse scoffs at his own sentimentality, but the sting, the pain, is still so real. He hasn’t self-harmed in years, hasn’t felt the need to take up the knife, the scissors, the match. The last time he did, it could’ve been seen as an accident. He’d let his wrist come into contact with hot embers falling from Thursday’s pipe. The berating he’d got from the fatherly inspector hadn’t dampened the knowledge of self-mutilation.

Morse washes his hair and spends a long moment under the spray before he finally shuts off the water. Shivering, he wraps himself first in a towel, then a robe, and heads to bed.

It comforts him to know Lewis is happy. And happy enough, hopefully, to never look at a kitchen appliance and wonder what it would feel like to slice through your own skin.

Morse climbs into bed, watching the lines on his arms run like rivers across the surface of his skin. It’s been a long time since that pain, and it seems so far and silly now, but he proudly wears the scars like armor, battered from a long war, and hopes they tell whoever sees them that he survived a long, hard battle.

And he came back alive.


End file.
